


Quarantine Boys - A Concept

by NiciJones



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Face Masks, M/M, Soft Oliver, bi panic tm, call me by your name retelling, little bit dystopian, pouty Elio, quarantine world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23431441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiciJones/pseuds/NiciJones
Summary: In a post-pandemic world, where touch is considered to be a social taboo, American grad student Oliver visits the Perlman family over the summer. Elio, who has grown up with a naturally affectionate family, is confronted with a house guest that is not used to touching anyone at all. A conceptual retelling of Call Me By Your Name in a different world.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 28
Kudos: 97





	Quarantine Boys - A Concept

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, I am so excited for this! This is, surprisingly, my first Elio/Oliver fic. I altered my writing style accordingly without trying to imitate Aciman. I hope you will like the end result and feel a little reminded of the characters in the books.
> 
> This setting has been eating at me. I might use it for other fics as well but this felt like a good place to start. I left out some aspects that would not have been altered by the setting and I based this more on the movie than the book to be quite honest with you. But you'll see that.

He arrives, like all the others, with a special transport, his face halfway hidden by a mask but the skin crinkling around his blue eyes told me he was smiling all the same. My mother, my father and I are lined up in the living room where we can keep the safe distance between us and our guests while greeting them. Just to be sure.

He is carrying his own suitcase, just one and I am immediately curious about the contents. How does one pack up their lives into one suitcase? My mind strays to my own room, that would be his room, and the things I’d pack in such a suitcase. Would a guitar fit in?

“Oliver! Welcome, welcome! I hope your flight was pleasant!” My father says and he extends his arms. I know that’s what he does when he wants to hug people but knows that it isn’t socially acceptable. 

“Oh well, exciting, definitely. Never been on a plane before. But exhausting for sure.” His expression changes but I can’t quite tell what it is with his mask still depriving me of the view of his lower face. I wonder if my parents would want to exchange more pleasantries or whether I would be able to finish the book I started this morning. I suck my bottom lip between my teeth and contemplate whether I trust Aegeus to help Medea out. Taking into account that this retelling was written by a man…

“Elio, why don’t you show our guest to his room?” My father interrupts my thoughts and puts a hand on my back, squeezing my shoulder. I know that he is telling me to pay attention without actually embarrassing me in front of our guest. It’s his way of kindness, I guess.

“Sure. Just this way around the corner and up the stairs.” I explain and gesture for him to go first so I can trot behind him, keeping my distance. He seems to have no effort lugging his suitcase up the stairs and I wonder whether he works out regularly. Probably with the way he looks. 

“You’ll be staying in my room,” I explain and point him to a door which he opens and steps through. “All the other rooms are smaller and since you’ll have to stay locked into quarantine for the next two weeks, it’s only fair.” Or so my parents thought. “Mafalda sprayed disinfectant everywhere, I’m sure, although you’ll be sharing our germs soon enough.” I lean in the doorway as he drops his suitcase and collapses face-first onto the bed. There’s something sensual about the way he lies there, all stretched out, even though he’s still wearing all of his clothes, including his shoes. “I’ll be the next door down. We are connected through the bathroom but until you’re out of quarantine, I’ll be using another one.” 

Oliver groans. I think it means he’s agreeing. Or sending a signal that he is still listening. Planet Oliver to planet Elio.

I rub my arm in thought, look over at the still-open door. I should remember not to touch the handle until Mafalda has disinfected it again. Could I leave now? How long was it expected of me to stand here in case he says something else? I look around the room and pray I didn’t forget to move anything I would need in the next 2 weeks. 

That’s when my gaze falls on the balcony door. “Oh, we are both connected to that balcony by the way so… if you wanna go out, maybe make sure to stick to your side. At least until you’re out of quarantine.”

Another groan from the bed. What are you? A bear or a grad student of an ivy league school? Deciding that is all the insult I can take to my literary soul today, I step back and kick the door shut with my foot. The bang echoes through the entire villa.

“Elio!” I hear Mafalda shout in disagreement.

“Intruder touched the handle!” I shout back and make my way down the hall to my own. I hear her steps coming up the stairs, probably disinfectant at the ready and muttering something about how Oliver is ‘ _a respected guest of his father, no manners that boy_ ’. I roll my eyes and shut the door to my room behind me.

*

Dr Paolo comes by the next day. My father and he are exchanging pleasantries when I come down from my room. I try to be casual when I slip into the room and drop a casual, “How’s the American?” Flights are always a risk which is why you need special permits and forms to justify the necessity of your trip. Besides everyone in this region is super wary of intruders bringing germs in here. 

“So far so good,” Paolo says. Every year he takes care of making sure our newcomers haven’t brought in something that we wouldn’t be able to get rid of. He used to fight with my father all the time about his reckless decision to establish this tradition but by now he has settled into a wary acceptance of the situation. My father may not look like it but you don’t want to get onto his bad side. 

“I’m sure he’ll check out fine,” Papa says and I can sense the old argument bubbling to the surface and decide I have heard enough. He’s healthy, that’s good.

“One day one of them won’t, Sam.” Paolo reminds him and I walk through the door out onto the terrace where late breakfast is waiting for me. 

*

Sometimes I almost forget that he’s here. I just do what I always do. Read, transcribe music, watch television if I can stand it. It comes to me whenever I go upstairs and walk down the hall past my room. There’s a biohazard sign taped to my door. Standard procedure. My dad hates it because everyone in our household knows what’s up anyway and it doesn’t exactly help us to make our guests feel welcome when you are forced to lock them up and then label them a threat to life. So each summer he chooses a quote to tape beneath it, somewhere between defiance and hope. This year it’s, “ _I’ve learned that people forget what you said, People will forget what you did, But people will never forget how you made them feel,_ ” by Maya Angelou. 

When I sit in the garden behind the villa, I can sometimes see him through his window. Well, my window technically. He likes to read in the natural light, as close as possible to the outside as possible. Mostly it’s a stack of papers which I guess is part of his manuscript. Sometimes I discover him lost between the pages of a book though and I find myself wondering whether he brought his own or if he took one of mine. For some reason, I like the idea even though it means I might lose them if he turns out to be carrying something. They would go with him. I like the idea of that. Like a usurper taking over my room, wrecking the contents with his germs and leaving nothing behind for me to return to. 

*

One day when I sit at the pool, I see him step out onto the balcony. He looks so different from the way he did when he arrived. No face mask, his open shirt billowing in the slight wind, relaxed expression on his face. Almost like he’s already out of quarantine. He pushes his hair back and turns his face to the sun, eyes closed and hands entwined behind his head as he soaks up the warmth. It arches his body in a way that reminds me of the perfection in ancient Greek statues. The fact that he is still wearing clothes only adding to the intrigue, the temptation.

It hits me right then, a wave of desire. I long to taste the sweat of his skin and feel his chest hair under my fingertips. I look away reminding myself of how distant our guests usually are. Despite all the precautions- They just aren’t used to touching and being affectionate. 

Unlike me, who grew up with affectionate parents and who is used to touching and being touched, they usually watch my parents with wide-eyes when they kiss at the dinner table or hold hands while relaxing in the garden. So they keep their distance and flinch whenever I forget and reach out to clap a hand on their shoulder, brush their fingers while handing them something or kick their shins under the table. 

I mostly got used to keeping my distance, tired to see the fear in their eyes, watch them disappear and catch them wipe the spot with disinfectant. And then they apologise a thousand times and explain that they know nothing can happen but they just aren’t used to it and anyway, shouldn’t I save this affection for someone special? Maybe Oliver is special. Maybe he had been brought up similarly and wouldn’t run away when I trace the shape of his calf.

Oliver lifts his hand in greeting, obviously having spotted me where I was sitting and spying on him. I feel a blush creep up my neck even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I may not be allowed to touch him but I am allowed to stare at him. And he had been the one to put his body on display like he was vying with David. I wave back. I wonder whether he would shake my hand once he comes out of quarantine. I wonder what the skin of his hand would feel like, pressed palm to palm to mine.

*

It may have been a day or two later when I hear a voice. I am sitting at the desk in my room, pouring over my diary when I hear it. Am I imagining it? Is it just the wind sweeping in through the open windows? But then, again-

“Elio?” 

My gaze falls on the door connecting my room with his. There’s a piece of paper taped to it as well. “DON'T LET THE USURPER BITE”. I roll my eyes fondly as I see it and Marzia’s sketch of a germ cell with a crown. _I’d let this usurper bite me_ , I think.

“Elio, are you there?”

I blink and realise that there was a reason I looked at the door. “Oliver?” I ask, hesitatingly in case I am just imagining it.

“Of course it’s me. Or do you have any ghosts here that I should know about? I suppose it’s an old villa.” He chuckles and the unexpected rumble of his voice sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the wind.

I roll my eyes and stand up, the chair scratching over the old hardwood floor and I take the time to stretch my back, locked up from hunching over my journal. I didn’t want to appear too eager. Then I trot over and lean against the wall next to the door. “Everything okay?” I ask because he is still our guest and if something was wrong and I hadn’t asked, I would never hear the end of it.

“Not really. Just-” I imagine him shrugging behind the closed door but there’s no way to tell whether I was right. 

“Just what, Oliver?” I ask and try not to sound too invested. What if he was feeling off? What if tomorrow Paolo would order the house to go into lockdown, a squad of medics in full-body suits coming in to remove Oliver, burn down everything in my old room and sanitize it down to the core? It would end before it even began.

“Just bored. Lonely, I guess. Talk to me. What’s it like, living here?” 

_What is it like?_ I think. I know some things about America and what it's like to live there. How they internalised the public contact prohibition with puritan enthusiasm. They lost a lot of their population back when the pandemic swept across the earth. Fear and paranoia made them docile to government restrictions.

But so had Italy. We were the example they didn’t follow, or so I had learned in class. But while we too keep our borders mostly shut and refrain from touching in public, there’s a different quality of life here, our summer guests have told us. Maybe it’s just my family though. Papa never believed in slowly weaning children off touch. At this point, it’s considered indecent, but it’s not like doing house visits is terribly common and I learned to separate in here from out there eventually.

“Good. You know, we are in our little bubble I guess. There are books and music, swimming in the river. Those kinds of things.” I muse.

“You swim in the river?” Oliver asks and I don't know whether he sounds excited or scandalised. Maybe a mixture of both. “You think I could do that, too?”

I can’t help the slight chuckle that escapes me. “Sure you can. Everyone around here does it.” 

I can hear him stall, naked feet moving on tiles. I wonder if the weather is too warm for him or if he just likes walking around barefoot. Is he walking away? Is that it? But then he speaks again and it seems like he’s speaking from below and it takes me a moment to figure out that he sat down.

“So what’s it like being the son of a professor?” He asks and I sit down as well. I don’t want to be above him. It feels wrong.

“Everyone always thinks he’s only involved in his studies. I wish he was a little _more_ invested in them and a little less in my life.” I draw the knees up to my chest, lean on them. I had never told any of our guests that but nobody had cared to ask before. I love my father but sometimes I feel a little smothered by his love.

“He’s just worried about you,” Oliver says and there’s a different tone to his voice now and I wonder if someone replaced the Oliver behind the door. And how many Olivers there are. “That’s not a terrible thing to happen to someone.” 

I shrug before I realise that he can’t see it. 

“I was wondering- when I found out about this project and read about your family… I learned that he has a son and I wondered why he would take in young academics then. Whether he is searching for someone to be his heir, a foster child if you will.” Oliver explains. I try to picture him behind the door. Is his head leaning against the door? Had he extended his long legs in the space of the bathroom and are his feet hitting the other wall? Is he wearing the shorts I’d seen him wear on the balcony earlier and are there goosebumps crawling up his legs where they rest on the cold tiles?

I lean my head back against the door.

“You’re too tall to be a foster kid anymore, Oliver,” I say with a smile, my fingers starting to trace the wood pattern of the floor.

I hear a soft laugh through the door. “What is it that you want to do?” Oliver asks. It surprises me as much as his height when he’d first stepped through our door.

“I don’t know. I am pretty good at the piano. I might try to pursue that.” I point out. “But there’s not a lot of security there.” 

“Sometimes that’s not the most important thing,” Oliver says and I’m suddenly reminded of the fact that he is older. I wonder what experience prompted him to say that. As a grad student facing a career in academics, he isn’t looking at much prosperity in life either. “I think I heard you play,” Oliver adds suddenly. 

“Could be.” My father taught me initially but my talents quickly outdid his skills and he handed me over to be taught by a professional teacher. I could do that, I suppose. The future is nothing I really worry about, especially not in the summers I spend here. It all seems so far removed from reality. Just a little town and a big villa and friends to help me through the endless stretch of hot summer days.

“Will you play something for me? When I get out of here?” He asks and there’s a newfound hesitance in his voice that doesn’t quite seem to fit the man that had unabashedly shown off his body as he bathed in the sun today.

“I’ll play you something tomorrow,” I promise, following an instinct that I wasn’t familiar with and that I couldn’t explain or dissect, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. I would play something for him, just for him. 

*

The two weeks pass by quicker for me than him, I think. I had all sorts of things to distract myself with. I had the freedom to wander around the garden, go for a swim in the pool or read in a different spot. So I am surprised when Paolo shakes my father’s hand begrudgingly and admits, “you were lucky again, Sam.”

Suddenly my heart starts pounding. They are standing outside Oliver’s, my, room. The two weeks, they are over, he cleared all the tests. Excitement grips me. I had been on my way to my current room when I had run into them and realised that this was the big moment. I linger and see my father smile fondly at me. He always encourages me to be friendlier to our guests. “Look, they won’t want to spend their whole time here sitting around with an old man like me,” he always says.

My father knocks at the door, formal and respectful. “Oliver?” He asks loudly and I hear steps, the squeak of the handle that I am so familiar with when I try to sneak down into the kitchen for a midnight snack. Or come back home late and don’t want to wake anyone. It’s more courtesy than fear of reprimands, really.

“Pro!” He exclaims as the door swings open and reveals him. Blue t-shirt, short shorts, blinding smile with white teeth. It feels like I’m looking at him for the first time and maybe I am. Aside from the time I had caught him on the balcony I hadn’t cared to look much or hadn’t perhaps really appreciated what I had seen. 

“Oliver, welcome, welcome. I’d love to give you a hug but I know you folks don’t really do that.” My father smiles. “Do whatever feels comfortable for you.” He assures him. “Now I believe that there’s ice cream waiting for us. Don’t get too used to it though. You have to ascend into Mafalda’s good graces before you get a treat like that regularly.” He explains.

Oliver, I think, would have no trouble doing so.

He steps out and nods at Dr Paolo, then his gaze wanders over to me. I sway uncertainly on my feet, one hand still attached to the railing of the stairs. I feel myself blush under the intense gaze of his eyes and I wonder what emotions lie beneath it. I’d been looking forward to meeting him for real. 

He’d turned into a mystery of sorts and people are naturally attracted to mysteries, as was I to the man I played piano for. Every day at 4 pm. Like for a long lost lover. I’d open the window and sit down on the bench, stretch my finger and warm them up with some melodies I am so used to I can play them in my sleep. Then I’d move on, let my fantasies of what Oliver gets up to during the endless days of quarantine guide me through different pieces that reflected his mood today. The mood I came up with in my head for him and that maybe was just mine that I projected onto him, or perhaps I was trying to decide how I wanted him to feel. I wish I could yield such power over someone, to have their happiness be tied to my actions, to my own happiness. 

“Oliver, you’ve met my son, Elio.” My father says promptly and I am forced to face his gaze again, smile. Have I disappointed him? What did he think about the daily concerts, played with just him in mind? He’d just asked for one piece and I had made a regular habit out of it. My parents say I get attached too easily, that I sometimes interpret words where none existed. Feelings where there was just politeness.  
I realise with a flash that he might have only spoken to me because he had no other option. It’s not like he could just go down and speak with my father instead. He had been trapped and I had been his only contact to the outside world. I feel shame crawl up in my chest.

“Hi,” I say and nod quickly before making my way to my room. The original plan. He’s here to talk to my dad anyway. He doesn’t need me anymore. 

“Elio! The ice cream?” My father says and I turn my head to look at him briefly. I don’t care about the ice cream. I don’t want to sit there and have to watch him get acquainted with everybody, talk about his travels and his manuscript and how their kid is, and he’d lean again, try to make sure I wasn’t overhearing it but I’d hear it anyway, a little clingy. And parents would nod, smile in a rueful way and say something as stupid as _we love him just the way he is_. But most of all I don’t want to _share him_. I don’t want him to give answers to their questions which were just questions I hadn’t thought of yet.

“No thanks, pa.” I close the door of my room behind me.

*

I sleep in as long as possible the next day. I don’t want to have breakfast with them all and see how he doesn’t give me a second thought. How I was just convenient for him for awhile. It’s past 11 when I drag myself out of bed, exchange my pyjamas for a bathing suit and a tank top. Slip my sunglasses on my face. That way no one would be able to tell what is going on in my head. I still had to learn how to build my defences against him. But I couldn’t do this without knowing how he’ll hit me. So I left my room, much like a soldier leaving for a war he isn’t sure he will return from.

When I step out onto the terrace where usually breakfast is waiting for me, I see him stretched out in the grass of our garden. He has all limbs extended and his shirt lies discarded next to him in a pile. I am unexpectedly hit with a much closer view of his chest, the necklace I hadn’t noticed before, the expanse of his thighs and calves that seem to drag on forever. 

“ _É troppo tardi!_ It’s too late! Lunch will be served soon.” Mafalda scolds me and then runs her hand through my hair in the motherly way that I had grown to be embarrassed by in front of our guests when my voice started to drop. My hand chases hers, tries to restore the carefully tousled look I had composed. 

She had also exposed me to Oliver whose been lying oblivious to my staring. But now he has his head turned, blue eyes open. I try to decipher what the slightly detached look on his face means. “Elio. Finally rested?” He asks.

I shrug and walk a little closer but realise there wasn’t really a game plan behind the action. 

He squints up at me and even though he’s lying at my feet, he seems massive. “It’s good to finally be out of that room.” He explains and curls one of his arms to rest his head on it. Somehow, it puts him even more on display. 

“Yeah. I can imagine.” I look down at my feet so as to stop staring. Even if he can’t see my eyes, he knows where I am looking. I didn’t want him to know. Or I did want him to know but without having to hear the answer if it’s anything other than yes. My toe drags through the dry earth. 

Mafalda comes back out and hands me a bowl of yoghurt with a fresh peach cut into even pieces and spread evenly over the yoghurt. “ _Troppo sottile, quel ragazzo_. Too thin, that boy.” She tuts and disappears back into the kitchen, probably to make lunch. 

I nod and settle on the rim of the pool, eating it slowly and peering at Oliver out of the corner of my eye. 

*

I give him the cold shoulder. It’s a few days later and I have been watching him lounge around with my dad, talking about his manuscript, following him into his study and testing his little Italian on Mafalda who is charmed beyond rescue. I hate him. I am pretty sure I hate him. Why else would his mere presence agonise me this much? 

All it takes is Oliver walking into the room and all I would be able to focus on is him and whatever he does would spark an unprecedented amount of anger and spite in me. I always thought of myself as a rather docile person. My parents' lax way of raising never prompted bursts of teenage rebellion in me. But whatever Oliver would do, it would fill me with anger, so much so that I’d long to go over, take whatever he is doing from his hands and do it for him. But rather than that, I actively ignored him and should he ever address me with one of his relaxed _good morning, how did you sleep?_ , which also antagonised me greatly, I managed to reply with five words or less. But he rarely ever did.

Of course, my father notices. He takes me aside one morning after I had ignored him completely again, pulls me into his study and shuts the door behind us. _Leave it open_ , I want to tell him. _Let him hear all about how much his stupidity drives me up the walls_. “Elio, what is wrong?” He asks and takes off his glasses, looks at me with inquiring eyes. I wonder whether I was speaking to the professor or my father. Or perhaps he was always both and I just attributed one thing to the other without realising that he always had my best interest in mind.

I shrug. “What should be wrong?” It’s perhaps a bit petulant of me but I wasn’t in the mood to entertain him. He wasn’t the problem here and it’s nothing he could fix either way.

Now my father just looks disappointed. But I don’t want to argue with him, not about him. “Did he say anything? Did he make you uncomfortable?” Of course, he would think that. Not that I, his perfect son, could have made a mistake but Oliver who devoted most of his days to my father. Who is far more elegant and charming than any of our previous guests have been.

I shake my head no because he hadn’t. He didn’t have to. If he had been interested in forming a connection between us, wouldn’t he have searched me out? “No, pa. Nothing like that.” I admit because it pained me equally to think about father treating Oliver unfairly. Maybe it was nobody’s fault after all. I had been there and Oliver doesn’t care for what I could offer him beyond entertainment in the time of a locked door.

He sighs and puts his glasses back on but he doesn’t go looking for something else in the study while he’s talking to me. He’d once argued with another professor that children deserve our whole attention. Just because they don’t have the same life experience as we do, he’d said, doesn’t mean they aren’t full humans with feelings and thoughts. Besides, there’s a lot we can learn from them just as much as they can learn from us. “Then what is it?” He asks and this perhaps, could be the professor, I think. Always trying to get to the bottom of things.

I shrug again and cross the arms in front of my chest. I didn’t want to talk about it but I also knew that my father wouldn’t let up. I briefly consider lying to him but I am not entirely sure he wouldn’t see right through me and I don’t know what to tell him either. Oliver has done nothing wrong aside from existing in my presence. “I just don’t think he really likes me very much,” I confess quietly, put one naked foot on the other. It comes out more vulnerable than the blasé way I had aimed for. 

My father huffs but he never did understand that people might not like me. “You are going to show him around. Take your bike and he can take Anchise’s. He’s not here to sit holed up in my study all day.” It’s as much of an order as my father has ever given me and the idea of showing him around, of showing him my territory and how I belonged here and he didn’t, didn’t sit wrongly with me.

Just to express some spite however, I protest, “he also lies on the lawn sometimes.” But I do it quietly. I know that’s not what he means and I know that he’s right.

*

This is how I find myself on a bike an hour later, Oliver by my side. He’d been excited at the prospect of being shown around. I take him to Crema. Long-winded rural roads under the blazing July sun lead us to the small town, not very far from where I live. It’s where I go to meet people for coffee or ice cream and to get new books whenever I grow tired of the ones I already have. 

I point out to him where to get pizza (Speranza’s, pizzas so big you can feed a family of five), I show him where to get ice cream (the store on the left at the piazza where they sell ice cream with tortellini cremaschi flavour) and I lead him to the bookstore where I pick up the novel I had ordered last week. 

We leave the bikes at the side of the road, perched on the pedals at the curb of the sidewalk. “Everyone does it like that here,” I explain to Oliver when he asks if I didn’t want to lock them up. “This is not America.” I remind him with a smile that is supposed to look like the smile I sometimes see on the faces of our guests. It seems to tell you that they didn’t only know better in this very instance but also everywhere else. They hold the few years of life experience over you, the fact that they are travelling internationally while you have barely seen all of Italy. That’s usually when I stop trying to talk to them. Now I am the one to use it on Oliver first.

“I noticed.” Instead of showing hurt or disdain perhaps, he smiles. It throws me off so much that I don’t even notice Marzia before she jumps me.

“Elio! Finally! Why didn’t you call when quarantine was over?” We don’t let guests into our house while our new summer guest is getting situated. She looks over at Oliver, an arm around my neck. Marzia is my best friend here and she is just as affectionate as my entire family when it comes to me. We started hanging out at the precious age where your parents begin to remind you to keep your hands to yourself. My parents had taken over pretty much and shown her while being respectful with strangers there isn’t anything wrong with being affectionate with your friends and family.

“Sorry,” I mumble and wrap my arms around her waist. “Marzia, meet Oliver. Oliver, this is my friend Marzia. She will probably be over from time to time.” I explain and realise there is a certain reluctance when introducing them. 

She’s a beautiful girl, he’s a gorgeous man. History has seen it over and over again. I can’t blame either of them. I imagine his huge tanned hand, slipping the strap of her dress off her shoulder, leaning down to kiss the exposed skin. 

“Pleasure to meet you.” Marzia pulls back and curtsies a little. Oliver inclines his head in turn and I feel myself transported into a 19th-century romance. 

I stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Come on, Darcy,” I say to Oliver and get back on my bike. “I’ll see you around,” I tell Marzia. “ _Andiamo americano!_ ”

*

We are following the flat street leading out of the small town and towards the village at whose edge the villa of my parents is set. I struggle to keep up with him, his huge legs propelling the bike forward effortlessly. He doesn’t even seem to be sweating despite the sun sitting high in the sky, the only sound the relentless chirping of cicadas. 

“So, is she your girlfriend?” He asks, the wind pulling at the strands of his blonde hair.

“Who?” I ask and try not to show how much I am panting from trying to keep up with him. It’s unfair, I think. His perfectly tanned skin while mine always stayed on the wrong side of pale, the muscles in his thighs stretching and clenching before my very eyes because his shorts are too short to cover them. He is sitting back, arms hanging down at his sides like you are meant to ride a bike without touching the handles. All of it angers me.

“Marzia. You two-” He makes a gesture with a hand that could mean all kinds of things. I hate that, too. Can’t he just say what he means? Prude American. 

So he has already fallen for her and he’s asking for my blessing, as his host, as her friend, as his friend. How courteous of him. I grit my teeth. I don’t want him to get with Marzia and I don’t know whether it is because I want to be the one to slip the strap of her dress off her shoulder and kiss the exposed skin or if I want him to do it to me. “Not yet,” I say. 

“Oh, I get it.” He says in that tone that I think men use when they talk about these kinds of things. _I haven’t had her yet but who knows what will come, right? She didn’t give in yet but she will in due time, just you wait..._ “Listen, I’m going to make a detour for the translator.” He announces suddenly and I look over at him, sunglasses hiding his eyes. “Later.” 

And with that word he’s off, racing along the lonely street with no hope for me to catch up to him. I stop pedalling and let my bike roll to a stop. Is he for real? _Later?_

*

It’s only then that I start paying attention to how often he uses the phrase. _Later, later, later…_ What later? When later? It starts driving me up the wall as well. How arrogant of him to offer no explanation, no goodbye. Just _later_. I hate him, I think, I really hate him. His stupid tanned skin and sparkling blue eyes, the bubbly laughs he offers when things take him genuinely by surprise.

I hate him.

We can share the bathroom now and since he has not asked anything else of me, that’s what I have been doing. He leaves his bathing suits in the tub to dry so whenever I want to shower I have to take them out first. Feel the half wet material against my fingers that he uses to mask his nudity. There is the red one, the green one, the yellow one and the blue one. I wonder whether there’s a system to him picking which bathing suit to wear that day. 

One afternoon, I am playing the guitar and not watching him read his book. He shouldn’t be comfortable lying in the sun, sweat dripping down his body. He shouldn’t be more tanned than I am and he shouldn’t look so much like he belongs so far from what he calls his home. 

“Play that again.” His gruff voice interrupts my thoughts.

I halt in my motions. I hadn’t thought he was listening to me. I don’t think he ever pays much attention to me. Yesterday, when he had been lying in the same spot, I had kissed Marzia here. He hadn’t reacted in the slightest but I knew better. I know he’s just putting on a front of indifference. I know he wants her. 

Nevertheless, I lead him inside, tease him as I play the piece on the piano. I am alive under his attention, pushing him away by altering the piece until he almost leaves me which is when I pull him back in with playing it in the same way I had played it outside. I hear his naked feet on the stone floor of the villa while my own work the pedals of the piano. He lets himself fall into one of the armchairs behind me and I let the last note fade out wistfully. 

“I loved it when you played for me,” Oliver says from behind me and I spin around on the bench, see the shy expression on his face. 

“You did?” I ask and feel stupid immediately afterwards. I hadn’t wanted to reveal how much his indifference was affecting me. I got it. He had been bored, I had been around, I got attached too easily. _C’est la vie_.

He nods. 

For some reason, that confession makes me breathless and I imagine him, much like I had back then, sitting in his room with the windows open to let the music drift in more easily. He has prepared for this moment all day much like a believer going to prayer at the same time every day. The altar he worshipped at, my music. 

“You never played for me again.” Oliver points out.

I don’t know what to say to that. _Just say the word and I play for you until my fingers are bleeding, Oliver. Just give me a little hint and I will never do anything else again._ “I didn’t think you liked it,” I admit, revealing too much again as is my nature. I had yet to learn the way adults shield themselves and others so carefully and completely from the truth.

“I love it, Elio.” He says and he says it like other people talk about unquestioned facts. _The grass is green, the water is wet, I love it, Elio._

He stands up and on his way out, his fingers brush the side of the piano, not careless but not with hesitance either. Like they are longing for something else but this is the next best thing they got. 

*

That night, I can see his silhouette through the door that connects our rooms. He’s standing at the railing, gazing out like a muse in one of the many poems I read. I always thought it was pretentious. Who just stays and stares into nothing? 

But when Oliver does it, there’s something eerily beautiful about the act. Something that makes me want to step out and ask one of the many questions I had collected over the past week but hadn’t dared to ask him. My desire to understand him doesn’t seem to be affected by the way he makes my blood boil and had very much to do with the way I couldn’t turn my attention elsewhere as soon as I entered the room.

Maybe it has something to do with the way he seems unapproachable in daylight. His blue eyes always glinting like he’s amused by your antics. But now with the soft light of the moon instead of the unforgivable rays of sunshine, he seems softer somehow. More vulnerable and _human_. 

It makes me step out that night and join him. I walk up next to him and lean on the railing, trying to figure out what he is seeing in the dark. When I look over at him he is smoking a cigarette. The end of it lighting up in an angry red as he takes a drag and I feel strangely connected to it. Oliver seems to make me, too, light up with his attention and I as well as the cigarette, felt that maybe therein lay my very purpose. Even if it meant he was consuming me until there would be nothing left of me.

“So Marzia and you, huh?” He asks and I shrug. This is another one of those talks, _man to man_. Intimacy created by talking about round curves and kissable lips.

I watch him as he lifts the cigarette to his own. “Yeah,” I say although I am not entirely sure what I am agreeing to. “We haven’t slept with each other.” I clarify, suddenly embarrassed by him thinking about us, naked, sweaty, entwined. Then aroused when I think about him finding it arousing. I drag my eyes back out to the dark trees swaying lightly in the soft wind of the night.

He nods like he knew that already, like he himself had been there, lets the smoke billow out of his mouth. I swallow, drag my eyes away again.

“You wanna have a go at her?” I ask him, voice airier than I would have liked. 

He chuckles. “No, no. Don’t worry about me.” His voice is slightly rougher and I wonder whether it’s because of the smoke. Jealous of the way he brings it to his lips again, I pluck it from his fingers, bring it to my own lips.

Cigarettes aren’t common anymore with the health craze that started after the pandemic. But it’s not impossible to get your hands on them. I place my lips where his had been.

“This is not the first time you are doing this.” He remarks when he takes it back from my hand, our fingers brushing ever so slightly. I assume he guesses from the way I don’t break out into a wild coughing fit like I had when I did try it for the first time.

“We have parties,” I explain. “A few people from Crema. Marzia, Chiara, a few others. We switch locations a lot so the authorities can’t find us. You should come sometime.” I hadn’t meant to say the last part. But he wouldn’t come, right? This is a party with dancing and drinking and touching.

“Sure.” He agrees and lets another cloud of smoke billow out of his mouth. “Elio, can I ask you something?”

Is he going to ask about my obsession with him? Is he going to ask if he can have a go at Marzia after all? My heart is pounding in my chest and the blood is rushing in my ears. “Sure.”

“Are all of your friends raised like this?” He asks. 

“Like what?” 

“Touching.” His voice is quiet like he is whispering a secret that only I am meant to hear. But I know why. It’s taboo. He has been raised to be ashamed of it like all the others.

I never tried touching him, afraid of him recoiling and hurting a hope I didn’t know I had been harbouring. I shrug. “No. Not all of them. Some of them started to because my parents told them it’s okay here and some are just trying to defy their parents.”

“So it doesn’t mean as much to you?” Oliver asks and I know what he means. Even in relationships touching isn’t common. Some people refuse to be touched at all and those who eventually do it with their partners keep it behind locked doors.

“No, it’s just nice. Comforting and reassuring.” I shrug, steal another glance at his face.

“Can I try?” His voice is rushed and eager. He isn’t confident here, I realise. Maybe he has never touched anyone since his parents stopped doing it. Then again there are a lot of rumours about what you can and can’t do at Columbia, depending on how much you care about your social status. 

But I am more focused on the prospect of getting to touch him properly. Have him turn to me for this and not Marzia or any of the others. “Yes, yes,” I assure him quickly. Too quickly? Did I startle him? The last thing I want is for him to pull back. 

He stubs the cigarette out on the iron railing. “Let’s, let’s sit down.” He points out and we fold our legs, sitting down on the stone pavement of the balcony, facing each other. 

The unsure look in his eyes gives me the freedom to guide him. Much like a son looking to his father for guidance. It makes me want to treat him with all the care a father holds for his son, to protect him, love him, guide him. “Here, hold your hand like this.” I request softly, hold my hand out, palm up.

He extends it, much like a gift, passed on from one Jew to another. 

He trusts me with this, to know what to do, but I had never done this before with anyone either. Everyone had either been used to touching on a regular basis or never expressed any desire to start doing so. 

I let my forefinger descend on the earth of his palm, follow the lines of it like a lost wanderer on the path, feeling much like God creating Adam. That’s when I feel him shiver under my touch and look up at his face. He seems mesmerised, his entire attention focused on where my body touches his. His hand didn’t feel calloused and hadn’t expected it to be from a scholar like him. 

“Touch isn’t anything you need to be scared of. There’s nothing wrong with showing affection through touch. It’s something wonderful to experience.” I repeat words that my father has said often to me and many others. 

Oliver nods, eagerly and then, when my finger stills, curls his own, traps my finger in his grip. Touch isn’t something overly intimate for me, not really. But his touch makes me breathless and like a starving man at a laden buffet, I want more, always more, even if it should kill me.

We both draw in a deep breath, loud in the silent night. I find myself just as mesmerised by our touching hands, watch him uncurl his fingers slowly and turn his hand. I realise suddenly what he is doing, what he is asking me to do. Breathing seems hard, almost impossible, as I slide my fingers into the spaces between his, let our hands entwine like lovers in the darkest night. 

When I look back up at his face, I wonder whether I had wanted him all along and my mind had just been playing tricks on me. But I wanted him so suddenly and urgently like that day when I saw him standing on this very balcony, body offered to the world without a care.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr for aesthetics and additional info:  
> Main: [nicijones](https://nicijones.tumblr.com/)  
> Charmie: [charmie-inspiration](https://charmie-inspiration.tumblr.com/)


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